Kerala’s deepening political faultlines
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CPI(M), Congress are engaged in a hostile war of words inside and outside the Legislative Assembly

July 07, 2022 12:25 am | Updated 05:21 pm IST

Opposition MLAs come out of the Assembly in Thiruvananthapuram on June 27, 2022.

Opposition MLAs come out of the Assembly in Thiruvananthapuram on June 27, 2022. | Photo Credit: The Hindu

The attack on the office of Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi by the Students Federation of India (SFI), the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI-M]'s student wing, has put the parent party in a tight spot and provided ammunition for the Congress leadership to put the ruling front in the dock. The incident triggered a spate of attacks and counter attacks on party offices across Kerala.

Mr. Gandhi, during his three-day tour of Wayanad, his parliamentary constituency, endorsed the allegation of Congress leaders that the CPI(M) had joined hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He observed that Central agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation had failed to question Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in the diplomatic gold smuggling case that had rocked the previous Left Democratic Front regime while he was questioned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for five days.

Besides launching a broadside against the BJP, Mr. Gandhi also asked the Kerala Chief Minister to come clear on the issue of the one-km Eco-Sensitive Zone around all wildlife sanctuaries and national parks following the Supreme Court order on June 3. In fact, the SFI workers had carried out the attack, alleging that Mr. Gandhi failed to act on the issue. But Mr. Gandhi later produced evidence that he had already written to the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister seeking their intervention to exclude human settlements from the buffer zone.

With the attack on Mr. Gandhi’s office providing a trigger for the Congress-led United Democratic Front to step up its campaign against the CPI(M), the ruling party condemned the incident and the police subsequently arrested 29 SFI activists.

But just when the damage control exercise seemed to have succeeded in bringing down the political temperature, the crude bomb attack on the AKG Centre, the CPI(M) State headquarters last week, gave rise to a fresh round of turmoil in the State. With the Opposition accusing the CPI(M) of carrying out the attack to divert public attention and the police still groping in the dark to trace the culprit, the CPI(M) leadership and the Chief Minister are left to face uncomfortable questions in the Assembly and outside.

The two incidents portend a further intensification of rivalry between the ruling CPI(M) and the Congress in Kerala. The attack on Mr. Gandhi's office happened when the CPI(M) leadership has been pondering the role of Congress in the national political arena and its part in forging a non-BJP political alliance. The timing of the attack also seemed to have exposed the vulnerabilities in the non-BJP camp when the country is preparing for presidential polls this month.

The Congress leadership in Kerala would never have imagined the political mileage it derived in recent times from the attack on Mr. Gandhi's office. Otherwise, it feels that the BJP, with its ambitious Central leadership, will leave no opportunity to occupy the Opposition space in the State , which is witnessing a paradigm shift with religion frighteningly progressing into politics.

Amid an increasingly hostile war of words between the CPI(M) and Congress leaders inside and outside the Legislative Assembly over the attack on the AKG Centre, the politically conscious citizenry is completely baffled over the unexplained occurrence when police stood guard outside the centre.

While the Home department definitely needs to get its act together, political parties and their feeder outfits should ensure practising a healthy political culture without resorting to hooliganism and violence.

biju.govind@thehindu.co.in

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